This paper offers an alternative philosophy of whole number in which number-words are treated as being of the semantic-type modifier. Other accounts of number in which number-words are treated as names, syncategoremata, determiners, and predicates are considered and rejected based on their failure to provide number-words with the necessary compositional semantics. This leaves only modifiers as plausible candidates to play number-words' role in natural language. After the semantic-type modifier is chosen, a decision between number-words' being adjectival or adverbial modifiers must then be made. I argue that due to a lack of entities to be ascribed adjectival numerical properties we must settle on an adverbial treatment. After developing this treatment, I close with an attempt to explain seemingly singular-term uses of number-words in arithmetical statements like '2 + 2 = 4' in terms of these claims' stating the rules for substituting equivalent modifier-phrases in non-mathematical usages. / Master of Arts
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/42796 |
| Date | 05 June 2007 |
| Creators | Martin, James V. |
| Contributors | Philosophy, Epstein, Brian, Ott, Walter R., Klagge, James C. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | JMartin.pdf |
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